September 27, 1864---The Sacking of Centralia; Marianna Burning

SEPTEMBER 27, 1864:    

General Sterling Price C.S.A. continues his scorched earth raids in Missouri. Price’s avowed goal is to seize St. Louis and disrupt the Union Presidential election. In reality, Price has no chance of taking heavily pro-Union St. Louis, and has to limit himself to snatch-grab-and-burn raids in the countryside.

Price is leading the Missouri State Guard. Although the Guard has had as many as 28,000 men at one time, it is shrunken to less than 8,000, and many of these are irregulars --- desperadoes, bushwhackers, and outlaws --- although Price prefers to call them “guerrillas.”  Nominally Confederate, most of these men attack any target of opportunity.

Missouri, which has been suffering an internal civil war since 1854, has gotten no more peaceful. For every depredation of the Confederates, Union men hang Southern sympathizers and troops. For every Union action, pro-Confederate Missourians kill Unionists. The North-South split in Missouri is long-standing, personal, and full of rage.

Once a member of Quantrill’s Raiders, “Bloody Bill” Anderson has set up his own “command” of about 100 men. His subordinates include the Younger brothers, Cole, Jim, John and Bob, and Jesse and Frank James. Anderson’s men usually limit their destructiveness to Unionists, but they routinely scalp and sexually mutilate their victims.

On this day they enter Centralia, Missouri. After sacking the saloons, raping the women, and looting the town, they loot an arriving stagecoach and an arriving train. The train is carrying 23 Union soldiers on furlough, none of whom are armed. Anderson’s men line them up and shoot 22 of them, taking one, a sergeant, Thomas Goodman, as a hostage. They burn the train, the stagecoach, and the depot. This is the first successful train raid by Confederates in the war.  

Leaving the looted town behind, they return to their base. The shocked citizens of Centralia summon Union garrison forces (Missouri Volunteer Infantry) stationed nearby, and the Federals try to raid Anderson’s camp. Anderson, who has been alerted to the Union presence by local informers, has managed to assemble 150 men, who ambush a Union force of 125, kill most of them, and mutilate the bodies. A few men are left alive to be tortured, mutilated, and released as a warning to other Unionists.

Anderson delivers his unharmed captive, Union sergeant Goodman, to General Price. Although Price is personally horrified by the fact that Anderson and his men have decorated their mounts with scalps and other body parts, he commends Anderson for the raid, and tasks him to cut rail lines through the State.  

The Battle of Marianna, Florida:    Asboth’s Raid through the “Secession Belt” of Florida reaches the “buckle.” The small planation market town of Marianna is the home of Florida’s fanatically fire-eating Governor, John Milton. The local militia decides to make a stand against the Union forces despite being outnumbered at two-to-one, 800 to 400. The Confederate line gets off one solid volley, which kills most of the Union men lost in the battle. General Szandor Asboth is shot in the face.  Instead of scattering, the Federals charge, and a brutal, short, bloody fight ensues. After the town is taken, Asboth orders it burned in retribution. Losses are ten men killed to a side.

Although the battle of Marianna is just another one of the 10,000 all-but-forgotten “little” battles of the Civil War, it has an impact far more significant than its size alone would indicate. The destruction of the sedate market town breaks the back of secessionism in Florida. It also creates a legacy of bitterness among the locals. For most of the war, Florida (excepting the larger port cities) has been comfortably nestled close to the Confederate bosom, and has remained untouched. Considered too underpopulated and too geographically isolated by Union commanders to be worth a major land campaign, Florida has avoided most of the destruction seen elsewhere in the South. The putting of Marianna to the torch caps Asboth’s “scorched earth” raid and breaks the fighting will of all but a few on the Floridian home front. The Florida Panhandle is driven into an economic and social decline from which it never completely emerges.

And Marianna never quite outlives its past. The Union dead are initially buried in shallow graves soon dug up by animals, who feed on the corpses. The townspeople then rebury the Yankees in waste ground, far away from the town’s graveyards and churches. Confederate sentiment remains strong well into the 20^th Century.

A meeting of the United Confederate War Veterans (1927) and a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan (1934) are stark reminders that the past is never entirely past.